I had somewhat of a PETSCII induced fever over the past few weeks, one that needed Sating before I could practically start anything anew, or even continue anything existing……..
So, when I (eventually) re-make the C64Mini keyboard kit to be less soldery, more easierer and betterer, It may well have PETSCII on those keycaps, for all your milliputty smudgery into-ey goodness!
A500 Mini Prototype 2 is in the post, Every C64Mini keyboard kit and parts have been posted – I’m finally fully up to date!
Apolgies for any delays and people waiting on keycaps….
I believe I may have reached the end of life of my original Photon Mono printer. for the past couple of months, i’ve been having more and more print failures, and have had no idea why. I’ve approached the problem analytically to figure out what’s wrong
Where it started –
I had a proper working file that ‘just worked’ – exposure about 35s for the first layers and about 1.8s per other layer
That started failing a bit. some keys were printing incomplete. I increased the exposure slightly and success again.
More fails, this time the first layers were coming off the build plate. I increased the exposure for the first 4 layers and success again.
had many minor creeps of fails, up to now where i’m at around 50s for the first layers exposure and 2.2s per layer.
I figured maybe the temperature in the conservatory is too low – Nope, iterating a bunch of exposures with the printer near the radiator in the living room also had nothing but failures.
So, after a good 15 fails in a row, many caused my me experimenting with extremes, i’ve given up with the photon mono. There’s many things it could be, but I’m thinking it’s feasible that the LCD has finally ‘failed’. I’ve easily gotten 1500 hours of actual print time on the thing – well over 1000 will be just the production keycaps at 6.5 hours each!
So, back to the point of the article. Those things in the picture are a R E R F TEST for my Anycubic Photon Mono-X
I’m dialling it in to start printing the keycaps. First one’s going right now (50% UV power, 3.5 seconds exposure and 45s base layer if you like to know)
IF this keyboard prints – fantastic, I can print two at a time in just 5 hours! i’ll be through the backlog in no time 🙂
Thanks for listening and sorry again for the delays!
Dean
A customer, Kopaszné has done a superb job with his Keycaps. Some acrylic paint and a few hours
The paints he purchased from Lidl are these ones off eBay.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/254445322346
I’ve asked him to tell me a bit about the process he used, I’ll update when I know more 🙂
You guys (and gals) continue to impress 🙂 THANKYOU, every picture, message , feedback puts a smile on my face!
Download QMK TOOLBOX
Download the HEX FILE
Select the Downloaded HEX file from wherever you saved it
Select Auto Flash
Connect the USB arduino to your comupter
Short RST and GND on the arduino
Then, your arduino gets programmed! – Easy 🙂
Firstly, I’ve finally found the STL for the c64 mini keyboard kit keycap mould,
You can download it from my Google Drive – Here
Or from Myminifactory
Loads fixed with this – and it should hopefully be on Github soon also
The Hex File is above
There are only a couple of extremely tricky issues remaining now! they may need macros, and may not even be possible
Note with this firmware – It works perfectly with ENGLISH Language and UK Keyboard layout set in the firmware…
I hope to eventually be able to create more localised keymaps to change behaviour on boot so every language in the mini works well. IF there’s any pressing issues, please contact me, I should now be able to quickly and easily tweak a couple of keys for you.
Also, the Firmware will be part of the QMK Github soon, so you can download and tweak away yourselves!
To Upgrade your Keyboard, I’m finding QMK ToolBox to work brilliantly
Most older fimrwares out there will need to have B held down whilst shorting the reset jumper at the top of the keyboard inside , for whatever reason though t
I’ve found this a little flaky for whatever reason, sometimes mashing down every key whilst hitting reset does the trick
To make that more professional…….I now have configured the Bootmagic Lite.
To Update the firmware after this update, simply fire up QMK TOOLBOX, connect your keyboard to a Laptop. Hit ‘auto flash’, select the MCU (see picture above)…then Hold 1 and short the reset jumper inside the keyboard.
I’m still learning how configure all this, so bear with me, it’ll be slick just like those professional Mechanical Keyboards in no time*
*by ‘no tiime’ I mean potentially months and months as i’m tinkering in my limited spare time to add this extra functionality
Hi All – here goes
I’ve submitted a Pull request to the QMK Github to add the Mini !
https://github.com/qmk/qmk_firmware/pull/14159
And, here’s the firmware in a ZIP file to help
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1WVuZMWLF9_7ZtnlxLih7IebWrD0SbX_b/view?usp=sharing
That’s the QMK Code For the Arduino used inside the C64 Mini
How To Compile
Download QMK – I recommend QMK MSYS. Get it installed
There’s plenty of tutorials around
BUt, quick and easy – Unzip the above file to the KEYBOARDS folder
C:\Users\YOURCOMPUTERNAME\qmk_firmware\keyboards\
Then fire up a command prompt (Start, search, CMD, run)
and navigate to the the above folder
then run
qmk compile -kb c64 -km default
You’ll get a c64_default.hex file appear in
C:\Users\YOURCOMPUTERNAME\qmk_firmware\builds\
Now to flash –
Download QMK TOOLBOX
Arduino leonardo’s can be a little tricky to flash hex files to – be persistant – there’s two Tools that help
QMK TOOLBOX – that shows the keyboard enumerating when you plug in
Set it to ‘auto flash’ and you can try pressing / holding b and space (it’s configured as a magickey in QMK) to get the bootoader to kick in and flash the chip
If anyone knows a quicker way – shout!
And, if it helps
No PCB gerbers are public yet – play away! any suggestions, happy to look at incorporating them
I’ll follow in the future with more insight in how this lot works, and also modifications needed to get it going better… There’s a LOT to it as the Keycodes – https://sta.c64.org/cbm64pet.html
Don’t map to the HID codes used by USB…so, without some super customisation, certain combinations may never be possible
Some useful resources
https://www.c64-wiki.com/wiki/Keyboard
https://github.com/qmk/qmk_firmware
https://github.com/qmk/qmk_toolbox
https://thec64community.online/thread/688/c64-keyboard-mapping
and a few other C64 USB firmware’s i’ve found – these may have the bits needed to be able to get mine working much better – But, merging things is currently beyond my skillset – I’ll figure it out eventually
https://symlink.dk/projects/c64key/ – Has seemingly sorted out shifting, etc with custom codes. I can’t quite figure it out though
And, this awesome public project! – If you want a ready made USB interface – This looks great. Has some quite complex QMK mapping that i’ve not been able to understand – maybe it can be modded for my PCB!.
Wow, What a few weeks this has been.
My previous QMK on my small dev laptop worked great. However, moving the directories over to my new laptop (after the kids smashed the old one) – Not working so great
I was now stuck with a handful of ‘blank’ arduinos and no way to update the firmware code, nor any easy way to flash the .hex files to them
Long story short – a friend familiar with programming Arduinos found me this
https://github.com/p1ne/arduino-leonardo-uploader
It didn’t work!….BUT playing aroudn. it at least did pickup something
So….Digging further…I found
https://github.com/p1ne/arduino-leonardo-uploader/issues/5#issuecomment-407583517
I tried the code, didn’t work
Tried again and………Woooo!
So, where i’m at now……
I can actually program up arduinos for Mini keyboard kits!
The printer actually seems to be functioning
I’m back in Business
What’s next though
Figure out QMK, I’ve found a lovely chap who’s helping out a bit to compile my keyboard into the new version of QMK being used….then I can finally start doing some development again!
and, more importantly, get this C64Mini keyboard listed in QMK for you guys to be able to easily play with the firmware….
Having some fun with the printer this past few weeks. many, many fails
Lightly used, honest
Some possible lessons learned….
1 – Don’t mix Resin brands and pigments in untested combinations
I’d ordered a bunch of ‘expired’ Elegoo translucent green resin, going ridiculously cheap, (like 1/3rd the price it should be) it prints FANTASTICALLY…BUT
….I normally use Anycubic Clear, just because it’s what i started with, and it works.
I also add various pigments from http://resin8.co.uk
Mixing in an old batch of C64 Brown with the new Elegoo didn’t really work. I had 6 failures in a row – which i’d assumed was the FEP or me doing something silly / bad levelling . The 7th failure punctured the FEP! At that point i’d realised what i’d done (mixing all the stuff together) so, ordered some new Clear resin. I got a perfect print straight away!
The thing you see above is me, changing the supports (finally) after having issues with the old base layer being too thick and seperating from the build plate. I’d gotten around this by using longer base exposures, but still, had more failures than I’d like.
Hopefully now i’ve new FEP, new resin, and spent a couple of hours doing the supports properly, I’ll get a fresh print tomorrow!
My next issue – as you can see above…QMK. I spent weeks learning how to, and setting up QMK on my old laptop, which the kids smashed.
QMK has moved on a little it seems as now there’s a dedicated QMK MSYS32 installation…BUT, it doesn’t compile my old keyboard layout. if there’s anyone good with QMK out there, give me a shout!. I’ve no doubt I can get things working again to work on the code a little, just pressed for time for the next month or two and, i’m getting the coding itch this past few days 😛
Firstly, if you’re interested in a kit, reach out via email
KEYBOARDS AT BLEUGH.BIZ
you can also find me lurking around facebook, reddit, twitter!
Two brands have been successfully used to colour your keycaps
1 – Milliput Epoxy Putty – (Thansk DAN) Available here – amazon.co.uk/dp/B002CNEWAM
2 – Stucco K2 – (Thanks Vinz)
available in Italy.
For you English, This translates to “paste for interiors”….amusing that PASTA=PASTE…no wonder some stuff we ordered a few years ago in venice came a bit squdgy 😛
Use a damp cotton bud or similar type of thing to poke a bit in at a time and not get it everywhere!…leave to dry. clean up, then coat with some type of laquer or conformal coating if you really want!
Lots of pictures here, But looks like the latest batch of C64 Mini hackers are quite the clever lot. Batch 21 has been arriving around the globe, and look wot some guys gone done!
First email arrived early this morning – Vinz!, You’re a genius…..My jaw dropped!
Some explaination of the pictures…….
In photo 1, I used a ruler with double sided tape to solder switches as straight as possible
in photo 2 I used white putty to color the caps
in photo 3 I cleaned the excess putty
in photos 4 and 5 I painted the caps with matt transparent water-based paint, in this way the filler is protected
in photos 6 and 7 the work is finally done
Continue reading “C64 Mini Keyboards – COLOURED LETTERS! (by end users)”Phew, what a mad few weeks.
If you’ve paid for a kit or just keycaps or waiting on spare parts, it’s now posted.
Missed the Saturday run to the post office so sorry about that.
I’ve now a small amount of stock of keycaps and plenty of kits so I can relax a little and have fun printing other stuff for a change! Can you believe that I’ve run at least 6L of resin through the printer …JUST developing and then selling these keycaps, I’ve never printed anything else on it 🙂
A quick pictorial ! on the process of creating keycaps.
I’ve missed out a few pictures, but this covers the basics. Using a timer, it’s around half hour all-up per keyboard. Sometimes a little more if a print fails!
Tried to make a ‘GOLD’ keyboard but need to research a little on how to keep the particles suspended. This one failed due to too much gold. It all sunk to the bottom causing layers to become underexposed and ultimately sticking to the FEP
Also tried to make a crystal clear keyboard…unfortunately I topped up the vat with a tiny bit of the gold mix from a poorly labelled bottle I use f or mixing (I didn’t write any label!) I’ll give these away with a kit to the first person that asks 🙂
Quite late into development, I’d realised that the F keys were supposed to be a different colour. So, I add two sets of F keys to kits. Some early ones went out without the extras. Happy to send some out if you shout.
Thankyou everyone for your support! Sold quite a few more kits with keycaps than expected so frantically printing away more!
If you’ve paid for a kit or just keycaps, they’re all packed and ready to go! Should take between 3 days and 3 weeks depending on where you are on the planet!
I’ll hopefully be getting more time to update on other things soon 🙂
Have finally received the switches. Couldn’t find my multimeter so quickly tested the orientation was correct with a battery and LED.
Have now bagged them and have enough kits ready to fulfil those on the waiting list.
I’ll email everyone tonight and wait a week before I make kits fully available
Thanks for your patience everyone!
A quick post to show the keycaps being sent.
There’s no painting,
The letters are recessed into the keycaps and are very legible.
I’m working out postage costs as right now they’re still large letter in size here in the UK.
I probably won’t ship all of them them ‘on the supports’ as that doubles the weight
To fit them you just clip them onto your key switches
Painting. I haven’t been able to find an effective way to do that my end. A few suggestions have come in, maybe White clay would work well finished with laquer.
Hi All,
I’ve now packed up 10 kits ready to be shipped and have emailed the first 10 people on the waiting list.
It’s been an expensive couple of months with the bad PCB’s and wrong arduinos, but, payday at the day job was two days ago, so i’ve already ordered enough additional parts to make everyone happy within a few weeks
I’ll work may way up through the waiting list and let you all know when I can finally make general stock available.
My New PCB’s will be here today! DHL shipping is expensive, but great when you need stuff quickly!
What this means – I should have general stock next week.
Timeline – I’ll get a test board built up this week. if that works, I’ll email out everyone who expressed an interest.
I’ll get everything kitted up through the week (time permitting) so I can get some posted this weekend.
The rest of the weekend will be spent kitting up everything I have so I can start selling again.
Sorry for the delay guys (and gals). Been a perfect storm of wrong components sent, big customs delays, non-functional PCB’s. I thought the ‘march’ timeline was generous and had plenty of padding in for worst case.
For general availability, i’ll be reviewing the price. Most things have gone up by over 20% in general (Brexit, Yaay), some have come down, and i’ve made some optimisations. These projects aren’t a get rich quick scheme for me, they’re just a way for me to get funds together to buy more tools and things to make more projects! It’s pretty much a cost neutral hobby 😛
One final update – Keycaps. I’ve started manufacturing and at the time of typing, I have sent out a few test items to kit owners. I’ll await some feedback before I can hit ‘go’ and make more.
Those are just some of the prints i’ve had to do to get to where I am now. This isn’t representative of the typical resin printing workflow. its generally a bit easier than this, BUT, I had to start from scratch, learning how to do everything, including stuff that hasn’t been done by others. AND I needed the base level print to be ‘perfect’ to avoid the need to paint them. There’s over 80 hours of actual printing time in this picture, on top of that, there’s the cleanup time, CAD time, setup time….these are the ‘successful’ failures, there’s almost as much again that i’ve binned due to total failures, where keycaps were unusuable for anything, not even experiments (as these ones have been used for). fortunatley most of those failures were caught early to avoid too much wasted resin….but when I get only 1 chance in the evenings on some days to quickly iterate, get the printer going, 1 failure can set me back a few days.
Anyways, now i’ve finalised everything……..
I’ve used an entire bottle of resin over the last couple of weeks making test manufacturing prints back to back to tune the process, changing nothing, just print, print, print… By that, I mean, it’s…
I’m now at about 70% success rate for good saleable keycaps. the other 20% have minor blotches or surface uniformity issues, so i’ll sell those discounted for those that are interested. I’m still getting about 1 in 1o that can’t be used in any way.
Good enough, and i’m sure i’ll get better as time goes on. Each print takes 6.5 hours – slow, but reliable and a 25uM layer height so about as good as it gets on resin printing for surface finish.
Each print also takes another 30 minutes or so to ‘turn around’ –
And, Pack some up, ready for posting I have! I’ve done a mix of ‘on the supports’ and ‘loose in bags’ to see how these things go. I’ve posted a couple to myself via friends overseas to see if they survive!. once I know what i’m doing is working, I’ll make them available for sale!
8 sets of keycaps ready to go, waiting feedback from testers before I can ship!
CAD is final now! The keycaps fit perfectly . They latch on with a push and can be removed!
Continue reading “Nailed it! Commodore 64 mini keycaps.”
Happy chappy this morning. They finished printing last night, my draining widget worked a treat – I’ll put a quick GIF up soon.
But, forgot about them until a mad panic at close to 1AM remembering I’d left them on the printer. With these, you can’t as the resin in the concave surfaces will part set in the morning and cause an uneven surface.
So, quickly washed them in IPA, regretted it immediately as it was dirty. Did another wash in IPA to clean the resin and straight to the hot water tap and larger bowl with a brush to clean off the bits. I’ll strain out the bowl later.
Final tweak needed now is the amount of grip to the switches themselves, shrinkage is variable at the moment, can’t go too small or keycaps may break when putting on, can’t go too big or they’ll be too wobbly and fall off.
May need to go middle ground and require a tiny blob of something sticky in each keycap, I’ll know soon enough!
Trial run 13 underway with the resin prints. Colour should be pretty close, and Supports fairly optimal.
Trial 12 failed due to insufficient base size on the supports, caught it at 5% so no problem there other than a quick cleanup. I’ll know how it’s gone in about 5 hours!
Also, did a quick tweak on the space bar! I’m printing both new and old to see how they come out
Did some work on the Blinkenator also, and got sidetracked quite significantly with Fusion360’s parametric sketches. watch those tangent curves and how you constrain them!.
Has some successes with varying mixes of pigments! Wifey demanded I do a bronze one.
Fine adjustments needed only now and it’ll be a wrap.
….problem is, fine adjustments’ll probably take another 80% of the total :-p
Now, gotta figure out how to get Arduinos quickly as 50 wrong ones just turned up and due to Chinese New Year my expedited (expensive) DHL delivery won’t leave for a couple of weeks, D’oh! Best laid plans….
Well, final furlong for the 3D printing part anyway! Next step, investigating colouring in
Doing some sideways progress now.
When planning something, always allow time for ‘unseen’ stuff, or even anticipated issues that probably show up but you hope they don’t.
I’ve had two partially failed prints now, one fully expected and designed deliberately to see just how far I can remove supports or just how many I need to add
And, the one you see above. A large part of the bed failed to adhere so I stopped at 65%, just enough to recover the space bar…should have waited to 70% so I could grab a few of the bottom row also.
I’ve noticed slight warping in all prints but haven’t been that concerned till this failure.
On the plus side though, my new pigment colours arrived !
I now have a grip on how the colours mix and can iterate a little closer to the original brown now! It doesn’t help that I’m red/green colourblind so, matching brown, in the evenings , in the conservatory in non optimal lighting is probably a worst case scenario for me :-p
But, I can get close now and can get the wife to tweak the formula
One thing I’ve noted is that it can get expensive iterating colors in resin prints! I’m mixing 100ml at a time now, to start a new colour I’m dumping the old 100ml into my grey bottle! Can’t wait to see what colour that comes out as.
now, back to the print fails
First – Levelling. Seems my bed has become unlevel a little, so, I’ll need to re-level. This seems to be an excellent tutorial which i’ll follow.
Now, the warping. It’s something that I didn’t really experience much with my standard Filament printer, but now I clearly can see that it’s a common, but surmountable issue with Resin printers.
So, some research
I’ll need to re-design the space bar at least!.
https://www.3dhubs.com/knowledge-base/how-design-parts-sla-3d-printing/
And
https://www.3dhubs.com/knowledge-base/how-design-parts-sla-3d-printing/
I’d put a small re-enforcement bar all along the space bar which seems to have been an error and may well be causing more warping!
I’ll do another post with the re-design!
This’ll be a while away yet, but the REV4 PCB, has some new, experimental features that will possibly allow some extra functionality when used with stuff other than a C64 mini!
For the purposes of this kit though, the board is a little easier to solder due to slightly larger pads, I’ve also added silk screen ‘dots’ to the rear to show the only two pads you actually need to solder (or possibly one of the two if i’ve gone and goofed up the positioning! ).
I’ve removed the USB HELPER pads, these weren’t actually that useful
The other thing being added are pads that say ‘Joy’ – I’ve no idea if this will work, but my plan is to see if there’s any way to map the C64 Joystick onto the keyboard and then into a PC / MiSTer or other device with a USB socket. I’m putting these unpopulated pads on production boards as, now due to Brexit, it costs a fortune in customs fees and shipping for small orders of prototypes. I mayaswell order 50 boards which are tried and tested, with small mods on. If the mods don’t work, no loss – the boards still function just as sold.
If they work, AND i can develop the firmware, AND the software then it may add useful features for some people! But, my focus right now is getting the mini version perfect and not any extra features that require a lot of time for me to learn how to enable! If they’re ever enabled, i’ll probably spin them into a SMT only board so I can sell a ready assembled version for a little cheaper than the £60 i’m currently selling for
Also on this one, i’ve fixed the C64 header pin ordering to save people having to make an adaptor cable due to me swapping two columns and putting the rows in reverse!, D’oh!.
Anyways, enough waffle – on with the pictures!
Couple of successful prints! Rev 6 – just binging in stuff and hoping it works.
Rev 7 – more scientific and better CAD – all letters are now 0.2mm wider and deeper. This tiny tweak shows spectacularly well just how big a difference small changes can make.
Still some more CAD to do but soo close to final now!
And, finally, the print itself. I’ve learned that supports are critical here. Lots of them!
There’s actually as much material here in the supports as there is in the keycaps, but if you scrimp a little and try to reduce the amount, check out the top left of the picture below. I lost the return key and a few smaller keys were taken with it.
This was a calculated ‘risk’ by leaving this section to just have the standard auto generated supports, every other area had super dense supports.
There will be a middle ground, which I’m working on as I’d like to offer these cheaply…less resin used = cheaper to make!
Also, note the rest of the supports. THey are SO EASY to remove. When I offer these keycaps for sale, again to reduce cost, I’ll probably leave them as you see here. Makes for more robust packing and if you decide to paint them, you already have them held down on a convenient stand!
Well, experiment 1 worked a treat!
I purchased this pigment from Resin8
https://www.resin8.co.uk/opaque-resin-pigment—rich-brown-9247-p.asp
Added a blob – maybe 1-2ml worth off the end of a lollipop stick
Stirred that in with 150ml (well, about 150g by weight as that’s far easier, and it’s close enough) of Anycubic grey resin
And….
Very happy! Considering this is literally bunging stuff in and seeing what happened.
Still some way to go now to try the other clear resin and white resins, also tweaking the colours
Also have I some distortion issues on these keys but those are under control as there’s a very clear relationship between support structures and distortion/warping and underside finish!
I think I’m on track for a March launch!
Started a print tonight! Version 6 🙂
That colour may not look correct but it’s not intended to be perfect,
I need to iterate this process slowly and scientifically so I can recreate the colour at any time.
Best place to start is from a known working point and changing a single variable at a time to get to where you want to be
Here, I’m starting with the resin I know works – drab grey.
I’m adding an unknown if it works brown pigment just to see what happens!
If that prints, I can try adding black pigment to make it darker brown.
If it doesn’t, I can try using a CMYK mix of colours to make the correct Brown
Once I get that shade, I can try different resin bases to see what gives the best finish! Maybe clear + brown or white +CMYK will do the job!
I’ll be iterating the CAD model and the colouring at the same time!
Hopefully this new CAD model will fix the minor offset issues with the keyboard, shifting all the keys slightly to the right also allowing me to finally reveal a working test fit!
One small thing I picked up when test fitting my first attempt, I’d not perfectly centred the left shift key button and Return buttons on the PCB. It doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things as hacking your own keycaps doesn’t need perfect alignment on the wider keys, only the 1 wide keys
Where it is annoying though is I can’t correct this error or any keycaps I make now won’t perfectly align on old keyboards! Heh, what’s 1/2mm between friends eh!
Just a quick ‘Hi’ to anyone popping in from Retro Recipes!
And, if you’re just browsing here due to something else, go, have a look at Retro Recipes!
Whilst you’re there, go check out my “This Old Tony” style cameo in the video 🙂 ! yes, that’s official, it’s my HOLLYWOOD DEBUT!.
Oh, And it’s a little video about the C64 Mini keyboard kits, and a little reveal!
And, to get in touch, ping an email to KEYBOARDS AT Bleugh.biz
Cheers
Dean
That’s right, A few of you found me from Mr Perri Fractic’s channel on Youtube
There’ll be a little more coming up i’ve been told!
Highly recommend if you like anything slightly retro, give his channel a watch, superb production quality to it, great sense of humour and , generally seems to be a lovely chap that really brings out your inner childhood enthusiams for these weird old gadgets that a lot of us love.
Also, he’s getting close to 100,000 subscribers, so definitely is doing something right
Thanks Mr Fractic!
This one went well 🙂
Note, the intentional ‘stone effect’ finish 😉
Most people would say this was caused by an over excited person, whom, upon waking early and discovering the complete print decided to not follow the correct drying / washing procedures in order to get it finished quickly!
I, err, disagree…
Either way, I now have a firm grasp of changes needed to the CAD model and also the supports needed in the slicer.
Those changes are fairly substantial, so I expect it’ll be a little while for my next update, happy to document them also if anyone’s interested.
Bleugh.Biz Blog Thingy 